Chromebooks Will Soon Run Android Apps – No We’re Not Kidding – Call And SMS Mirroring Also

Today is Google I/O and they’re dropping announcements quicker than we can clean up the drool. One of the ones that caught my interested especially was about Chrome OS. Chrome OS is often criticized because it is limited in what it can do, but that ends today. Starting now, Chromebooks will be able to run Android applications as if they were natively built for Chrome OS. No, I’m not kidding.

Google had my jaw on the ground with this announcement and that’s not even all they announced for Chrome OS. Obviously the main story here is that Android apps run on Chrome OS and that is coming soon to developers. If I had to guess, I’d say we’ll see it in the developer channel soon.

Google showed off this capability with apps like Flipboard, Evernote, and even Vine. Impressively, these apps even have access to hardware on the Chromebooks like the camera.

But that’s not all. Google also introduced a feature for Chrome OS that mirrors phone calls from your Android device as well as text messages. You can even reply to those messages from the Chromebook. Even relevant info such as battery life mirrors to the Chromebook. Google didn’t mention the requirements for this or availability.

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